Artwork by Rickey Beckett celebrating 30 years of Ride the Lightning.

The late Cliff Burton, bassist of METALLICA, was a widely known enthusiast of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos tales. The influence of the writer on the artist and the band itself is most evident in the following works.

Ride the Lightning‘s closing instrumental piece, Call of Ktulu (working title When Hell Freezes Over), was inspired by both the eponymous tale and The Shadow over Innsmouth.

One of the songs from Master of Puppets, The Thing That Should Not Be, features entirely Lovecraft-inspired lyrics. Every single verse references one of his tales, and the text in general is structured much like the words uttered by men who have descended into insanity after acknowledging the existence of cosmic horrors.

The lyrics of the song are as follows:

Messenger of Fear in sight,
Dark deception kills the light! (1)

Hybrid children watch the sea,
Pray for father roaming free! (2)

Fearless Wretch, insanity (3) —
He watches, lurking beneath the sea! (4)
Great Old One (5),
forbidden site (6) —
He searches,
Hunter of the Shadows (7) is rising!

Immortal!

In madness You dwell (8).

Crawling Chaos (9) underground,
Cult has summoned a twisted sound!

Out from ruins once possessed,
fallen city — living death! (7)

Fearless Wretch,
insanity —
He watches,
lurking beneath the sea!
Timeless sleep
has been upset (10),
He wakes,
Hunter of the Shadows is rising!

Immortal!

In madness You dwell!

Not dead which eternal lie,
Stranger Aeons Death may die! (11)

Drain you of your sanity (3),
face The Thing That Should Not Be! (12)

Fearless Wretch,  insanity —
He watches,
lurking beneath the sea!
Great Old One,
forbidden site,
He searches —
Hunter of the Shadows is rising!

Immortal!

In madness You dwell.

1. ‘Messenger of Fear’ could be a reference to Nyarlathotep.
2. Reference to The Shadow over Innsmouth. The story features the hybrid children of the Deep Ones — the spawn of Dagon — and humans.
3. Insanity is one of the recurring themes in Lovecraft’s tales. Many of his characters are insane, or are driven insane throughout narration.
4. Reference to either Dagon, the fish deity inhabiting the sea, or Cthulhu, trapped in the sunken city of R’Lyeh.
5. In Lovecraft’s fiction, the Great Old Ones are ancient and unimaginably powerful cosmic deities. Cthulhu, Dagon, and other entities are Great Old Ones.
6. Many Lovecraft tales describe ancient and (seemingly) abandoned cities. As examples, R’Lyeh in The Call of Cthulhu, the city of the Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness and the Nameless City from the eponymous tale.
7. Probably a loose reference to Lovecraft’s The Haunter in the Dark.
8. Probably a reference to Cthulhu. People are sometimes driven insane by his sight. Could also be a wide reference to Lovecraft’s deities and semi-deities.
9. ‘The Crawling Chaos’ is one of the epythets given to Nyarlathotep — and also the title of a short story (unrelated to said character).
10. Some entities in Lovecraft’s fiction (Cthulhu, Rhan-Tegoth, the Elder Things) were woken from an unimaginably long slumber.
11. Reference to the famous, ‘much discussed’ couplet in The Call of Cthulhu: “That is not dead which can eternal lie — and with stranger aeons even death may die.”
12. Reference to a passage in At the Mountains of Madness, where the protagonist tries to describe the terrifying Shoggoth: “What we did see — for the mists were indeed all too malignly thinned — was something altogether different, and immeasurably more hideous and detestable. It was the utter, objective embodiment of the fantastic novelist’s ‘Thing that should not be’.”

Perhaps as a homage to their former team member, METALLICA produced another song with indirect Lovecraftian influences: All Nightmare Long. James Hetfield stated in an interview that “It was an attempt to get back to the H. P. Lovecraft mythos with Thing that Should Not Be, Call of Ktulu. This was about the Hounds of Tindalos, which was another crazy mindfuck about these wolves that hunt through their nightmares and the only way you can get away from them is stay within angles (120 or less). You can’t even escape through sleep.” Said creatures were only inspired by Lovecraft, as they were featured in the eponymous short story written by Frank Belknap Long.

In 2017, Metallica marked a return of their Lovecraftian songs with Dream No More, a song entirely dedicated to Cthulhu and the Apocalypse that its awakening would bring forth.

He sleeps under black seas waiting (1)
Lies dreaming in death (2)
He sleeps under cosmos shaking
Stars granting his breath (3)

He wakes as the world dies screaming
All horrors arrive
He wakes giving earth its bleeding
Pure madness alive

And He haunts you
And He binds your soul (4)
And He loathes you
And reclaims it all (5)

You turn to stone (6)
Can’t look away
You turn to stone
Madness, they say

Cthulhu, awaken

He sways in abyss returning
Inhaling black skies
He shakes with a torture burning
All lost in his eyes

And He haunts you
And He binds your soul
And He loathes you
And reclaims it all

You turn to stone
Can’t look away
You turn to stone
Madness, they say

Cthulhu, awaken

You turn to stone
Can’t look away
You turn to stone
Madness, they say

Sanity taken
Seething damnation
Cthulhu, awaken
(Wake) Winged salvation
Death by creation
Cthulhu, awaken
(Wake) Dreaming no more

Cthulhu, awaken
(Wake) Dreaming no more
Cthulhu, awaken
(Wake) Dreaming no more

1. Cthulhu ‘sleeps’ in the sunken city of R’lyeh.
2. Reference to the couplet: “That is not dead which can eternal lie — and with stranger aeons even death may die.”
3. Cthulhu’s ancient spells grant it and its kin the possibility to roam free again “when the stars are right.”
4. Cthulhu haunts the dreams of people worldwide.
5. “The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.”
6. Interestingly, turning people to stone is an ability that does not belong to Cthulhu — but rather Ghatanothoa from Out of the Aeons; some Lovecraft scholars believe that this story may be a simple reworking of Call. However, this line may simply reference the sailors that froze in or died of fear upon seeing Cthulhu.